Roc (mythology)
Roc (from Persian رخ Rokh''or ''Rukh) is an enormous Mutant legendary bird of prey. Contents hide * 1 Etymology * 2 Eastern origins ** 2.1 Rudolph Wittkower * 3 Literary tradition ** 3.1 Geography ** 3.2 One Thousand and One Nights * 4 Western expansion * 5 Rationalized accounts * 6 Religious tradition ** 6.1 Michael Drayton ** 6.2 Ethiopian * 7 Comparable mythic birds * 8 Footnotes * 9 See also * 10 References * 11 External links Etymologyedit According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this word perhaps influenced the word Rook chess piece, though that term mainly stems from the Persian رخ rukh orSanskrit रत rath, both meaning chariot (thus corresponding to the Asianchess variants). Eastern originsedit Illustration by René Bull Rudolph Wittkoweredit The roc had its origins, according toRudolph Wittkower, in the fight between the Indian solar bird Garuda1 and thechthonic serpent Nāga. The mythemeof Garuda carrying off an elephant that was battling a crocodile appears in two Sanskrit epics, the Mahabharata(I.1353) and the Ramayana (III.39). Literary traditionedit Geographyedit The roc appears in Arabic geographies and natural history, popularized in Arabian fairy tales and sailors' folklore. Ibn Battuta (iv. 305ff) tells of a mountain hovering in air over the China Seas, which was the roc.2 One Thousand and One Nightsedit The merchants break the roc's egg,Le Magasin pitoresque, Paris, 1865 The One Thousand and One Nights tales of Abd al-Rahmanand Sinbad the Sailor were widespread in the East. Western expansionedit 1690 painting by Franz Rösel von Rosenhof showing two roc-like birds carrying a deer and an elephant Rabbi Benjamin of Tudelareported a story reminiscent of the roc in which shipwrecked sailors had themselves carried off desert islands by wrapping ox-hides round them and lettinggriffins carry them off as if they were cattle.3 In the 13th century, Marco Polo (as quoted in Attenborough (1961: 32) stated "It was for all the world like an eagle, but one indeed of enormous size; so big in fact that its quills were twelve paces long and thick in proportion. And it is so strong that it will seize an elephant in its talons and carry him high into the air and drop him so that he is smashed to pieces; having so killed him, the bird swoops down on him and eats him at leisure". Marco Polo explicitly distinguishes the bird from a griffin. Doubtless, it was Marco Polo's description that inspired Antonio Pigafetta, one of Magellan's companions, who wrote or had ghost-written an embroidered account of the circumglobal voyage; in Pigafetta's account4 the home grounds of the roc were the seas ofChina. Such descriptions captured the imaginations of later illustrators, such as Johannes Stradanus ca 15905 or Theodor de Bry in 1594 who showed an elephant being carried off in the roc's talons,6 or showed the roc destroying entire ships in revenge for destruction of its giant egg, as recounted in the fifth voyage of Sinbad the Sailor. Tommaso Aldrovandini's Ornithologia (1599) included a woodcut of a roc with a somewhat pig-like elephant in its talons,7 but in the rational world of the 17th century, the roc was more critically looked upon. Rationalized accountsedit The scientific culture of the 19th century introduced some "scientific" rationalizations for the myth's origins, by suggesting that the origin of the myth of the roc may lie in embellishments of the often-witnessed power of the eagle that could carry away a newborn lamb. In 1863,Bianconi suggested the roc was a raptor (Hawkins and Goodman, 2003: 1031). Recently a giant subfossil eagle, the Malagasy crowned eagle, identified from Madagascar was actually implicated as a top birdpredator of the island, whose megafauna once included giant lemursand pygmy hippopotami.8 Aepyornis eggs, Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris Another possible origin of the myth originated from accounts of eggs of another extinct Malagasy bird, the enormous''Aepyornis'' elephant bird, hunted to extinction by the 16th century, that was three meters tall and flightless.[citation needed]There were reported elephant bird sightings at least in folklore memory as Étienne de Flacourt wrote in 1658.[citation needed] Its egg, live or subfossilised, was known as early as 1420, when sailors to the Cape of Good Hope found eggs of the roc, according to a caption in the 1456 Fra Mauro map of the world, which says that the roc "carries away an elephant or any other great animal".[citation needed] Another rationalizing theory is that the existence of rocs was postulated from the sight of the African ostrich, which, because of its flightlessness and unusual appearance, was mistaken for the chick of a presumably much larger species. Ostriches, however, were already well known in Biblical times.9 But on the other hand, a medieval Northern European or Indian traveller, if confronted with tales about ostriches, might very well not have recognized them for what they were (compare History of elephants in Europe)[citation needed]. In addition to Marco Polo's account of the rukh in 1298, Chou Ch'ű-fei (Zhōu Qùfēi ) in 1178 told of a large island off Africa with birds large enough to use their quills as water reservoirs (Pearson and Godden 2002: 121). Fronds of the raffia palm may have been brought to Kublai Khan under the guise of roc's feathers;1011 a stump of a roc's quill was said to have been brought to Spain by a merchant from the China seas (Abu Hamid of Spain, in Damiri, see below[citation needed]). Religious traditionedit Michael Draytonedit Through the 16th century the existence of the roc was accepted by Europeans. In 1604 Michael Drayton envisaged the rocs being taken aboard the Ark: Ethiopianedit The rukh is also identified in the Ethiopian holy book Kebra Negast as the agent responsible for delivering the blessed piece of wood to King Solomon which enabled the great king to complete the Temple. This piece of wood also is said to have transformed the Queen of Sheba's foot from that of a goat to that of a human. The piece of wood that the rukh brought was therefore given an honored place in the Temple and decorated with silver rings. According to tradition, these silver rings were given to Judas Iscariot as payment for betraying Jesus; the piece of wood became Jesus's cross. Comparable mythic birdsedit * Zal and the Simurgh. * Decoration outside of Nadir Divan-Beghi madrasah, Bukhara, representing a Simurgh. * Simurgh from the works of Attar of Nishapur. The roc is hardly different from the Middle-Eastern `anqa "عنقاء" (seephoenix); it is also identified with the Persian Simurgh, the bird which figures in Ferdowsi's epic as the foster-father of the hero Zal, father ofRustam. Going further back into Persian antiquity, there is an immortal bird,amrzs, or (in the Minoi-khiradh) slnamurv, which shakes the ripe fruit from the mythical tree that bears the seed of all useful things. In Indian legend the garuda on which Vishnu rides is the king of birds (Benfey,Panchatantra, 98). In the Pahlavi translation of the Indian story as represented by the Syrian Kalilag and Damnag (ed. Gustav Bickell, 1876), the Simurgh takes the place of the garuda, while Ibn al-Molaffa (Calila et Dimna, ed. De Sacy, p. 126) speaks instead of the `anl~a. The later Syriac, curiously enough, has behemoth—apparently the behemoth of Job—transformed into a bird. The Hungarian Turul, theZiz or Bar Juchne of Jewish tradition, the Fijian kanivatu, Finnish kokko, the Chinese peng and the Thunderbird of Native American tradition are also giant birds. Some recent scholars have compared the legendary roc with theHaast's eagle, of New Zealand. 1.4 m (4 ft 7 in) long with a 3 m (9.8 ft) wingspan, it became extinct around the 15th century, but probably inspired the Māori legend of Te Hokioi or Te Hakawai.12 This was said to be a colorful huge bird which (in some versions of the legend) in ancient times had occasionally descended to Earth to carry off humans to eat, but generally lived in the clouds unseen. Only its cry, after which it was named, could be heard. Indeed, the hokioi seems to be a composite mythical beast inspired by actual animals, just like the roc appears to have been. In the 1980s, it was found13 that male''Coenocorypha'' snipes, tiny nocturnal waders, produce an unexpectedly loud roaring sound with their tails during mating flights. The supposed coloration of the hokioi is not matched by any known bird, and generally would be extremely unusual for a bird of prey. Thus, as it seems the''hokioi'' was the eerie "drumming" of the snipes, explained with the ancestor's tales about the giant eagles which they still knew from living memory. Category:2012 Category:Mutants Category:Villain Category:Male Category:Animals Category:Mythology Creatures Category:Deceased Category:Cured Mutants Category:Mythical Animals